Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Love Banners

We had a lot of fun marble painting, then turned it into a beautiful Valentine's garland. I will confess that this craft took us a couple of days. One day we did the marble painting and another day we did the cutting, sewing, and letter writing. But the results... they were worth it!

I've read about marble painting ideas on several of my favorite blogs and have been wanting to let the girls try it. I found a cardboard box and a few large beads, since we didn't have any marbles. I squirted a bit of red and pink paint on the paper and showed the girls how to move the box around and watch the marbles "paint."

They had a lot of fun and loved working together. We ended up with four different paintings!

The paintings are so pretty and there are so many things you can do with them. Use them as wrapping paper, note cards, or even a background for scrapbooking. But, we were wanting to make a Valentine's Day decoration with them. What were we going to do? A garland, of course!

I found a heart-shaped cookie cutter and started tracing. I used the cookie cutter so that the hearts would all be a uniform size. Then the cutting began. While I cut, Lizzie practiced her writing. I had her write the word "love" a few times until she felt comfortable, then handed her a Sharpie. She worked hard to write the letters on all of our cut-out hearts. For the final step, we took a large, sharp needle and some thick thread. I sewed through both sides of each heart to string together each of the letters in the word "love". I did the sewing myself on these garlands, but a child could definitely do this part. Lizzie just chose not to. Use your discretion with your child's abilities.

Now we have about a dozen love banners that are the perfect size to slide into an envelope and surprise some of our family and friends!